[Gary Dillard]

Mike - I think you missed the point of my post altogether.

It was not an IFI radio problem / signal problem; we had a hardware problem - we apparently fried the radio connection in the RC when something else shorted out. The issue is that there is no way to verify where the problem is or if you have fixed the problem until you are on the field. You can check out every other system on your robot (hardware or software) except telemetry.

Here's what we knew - our RC was not communicating with the RC modem. That means it was either the modem, the cable, or the RC, or any combination of those. We suspected the modem since the case was open, so we changed it out. It turns out that was not problem, so we're stuck on the field with a bad RC.

When I borrowed the loaner modem, I specifically asked the IFI rep if I could try it out off tether to make sure that fixed the problem since it was during the time between alliance selection and elimination matches when no robots were on the field. I was told no.

Could we have done it anyway? Sure. But I asked the question and was told no, so as far as I'm concerned that was the rule and doing otherwise would be cheating. So we were stuck with the consequences.